


One Dark Stormy Night

by Lynda Sappington (HowNovel)



Category: Starman (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1990-09-09
Updated: 1990-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-07 04:04:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/426739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HowNovel/pseuds/Lynda%20Sappington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A terrified George Fox is warned by an apparition to leave Scott alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Dark Stormy Night

ONE DARK, STORMY NIGHT  
BY Abraxan

Federal Security Agency Special Agent George Fox lay hidden by a cluster of small cedar trees. A grim smile of satisfaction creased his face as he watched his quarry through the infrared scope on his tranquilizer gun. Thunder rumbled overhead as the wind picked up, bringing in a line of heavy storms. Fox didn't mind the soaking he was sure to get—the alien and its half-alien offspring were within his reach at last. Capturing them would be worth being out in the rain.

Fox watched the alien and its son as they huddled against the chill bite of the rising wind, obviously unaware of their imminent danger. They turned up the collars of their jackets and wrapped their arms around their bodies, trying to conserve their body heat. They must have known Fox wasn't too far behind them, or they might have started a fire to help stave off the night chill.

Concentrating on the scene so eerily lit through the infra-red scope, the FSA agent didn't turn to look at the men with him, but ordered in a tense undertone, "Surround them, but for God's sake, don't spook them. I want them taken alive."

The night sky was rent with flashes of lightning as the thunder increased in volume. The sky opened, rain beating the ground with hammer-like pounding, thunder crashing almost continuously now.

Through his scope, Fox saw the Starman squinting up at the sky, apparently fascinated by the lightning display. The alien raised its hand to shield its eyes from the worst of the rain and watched the increasingly violent light show with unafraid interest. It lowered its gaze to the teenager sitting in abject misery with his jacket over his head now, trying to protect himself from the rain as much as he could. The alien said something to his son, then stood and moved toward the trees on the hill above the secluded hollow where they'd stopped running to rest a while. Fox could see the boy watching his father moving away from him.

"What are you up to now, Forrester?" Fox muttered under his breath. "Damn! If he goes into those trees, he'll see my men!" He spoke into his walkie-talkie. "Sector 3...Sector 3. Subject is moving in your direction, repeat, subject is moving in your direction. Are you in position?" He waited for the expected response, then tapped on the walkie-talkie, wondering how damp it could get and still work. _They always give me the crappiest equipment possible,_ he thought. "Sector 3, respond. Sector 3?"

Just then, the alien reached the tree line and paused, his hands separating the water-laden branches of the trees that the wind was trying to whip in his face. The sky exploded in a brilliant exhibition of lightning and there was a resounding crack as a bolt hit nearby.

Fox was momentarily blinded by the flash, but blinked hard, refocusing his eyes on the spot where he'd last seen the alien. It was gone! The alien was gone! The branches where it had stood spun crazily as part of that tree toppled to earth as if in slow-motion.

"Sector 3! Sector 3! Any sector! Where's the alien?" Fox screamed into the walkie-talkie, heedless of being overheard by the alien's offspring. No response. _Where was everybody? Had the storm wiped out their entire communications system? What was going on?_

Fox put the scope back to his eyes and scanned the clearing ahead of him. He couldn't see any of his men—the places they were supposed to be were empty. The alien was nowhere in view, either. Its offspring had leaped to his feet and was running to the spot where his father had last been seen. The boy was pushing at the split section of tree that had fallen, apparently thinking his father was trapped beneath it.

Like a bolt of lightning striking his mind, Fox suddenly remembered there were no men with him this time, not even that bumbling idiot, Wylie. The Government, with typical shortsightedness, had given the funds normally allocated for Fox's pet project to the Environmental Protection Agency to find a way to keep some stupid minnows from being wiped out when a dam was installed somewhere, or some such nonsense.

With a snort of disgust, Fox rose to his feet and started to move toward the boy himself, tranquilizer gun in his hand. He'd get at least one of the pair. The father would turn up sometime to rescue its captive son, he was sure.

Fox stopped suddenly, dumbstruck by the apparition coming through the trees. It had the shape of the alien, Paul Forrester, but had a rainbow-colored glow surrounding and covering it, as if all the prisms in the world were focused on that body, shedding their brilliantly-hued light all over it. The boy, too, had stopped moving, staring in wonder at this impossible vision.

The apparition moved closer to the alien's child, then stretched its hand out toward the boy. A brilliant light, like a captive blue star, came from its opened fingers. The boy continued staring trancelike at the being shaped like his father while reaching into his pocket for his sphere. When he held it in his opened hand, it glowed instantly in response to the bright starlight emanating from the other's hand. The boy jumped, seeming surprised when it lit up.

Fox looked from the glowing Forrester-like thing to the boy, amazed that the boy seemed to be uncertain but not quite afraid of the brilliantly-lit apparition in front of him. The boy and the apparition held each other's eyes for several long moments, as if communicating somehow. Lightning still filled the sky, burning flashbulb-bright spots in Fox's vision. The rainbow colors around the apparition seemed to pulse with each flash. The apparition's face changed from the concentrated look it had worn from the first instant Fox saw it, to a slow, sad-looking smile as it continued to gaze at its offspring. Fox cocked his head, wondering what was going on, then his eyes bugged out as the apparition blinked out, disappearing instantly!

"What the...?" Fox muttered in confusion.

The boy ran to the spot where the apparition had been, looking around him frantically, calling, "Dad! Dad! Come back! Dad! Don't leave me!" His voice cracked with heartbroken grief.

Fox stayed rooted to the spot where he'd stood for what seemed like a lifetime, watching the boy's frenzied search for his father. He shook himself and gripped his tranquilizer gun more firmly.

 _Nah. That stuff didn't happen. The lightning is playing tricks with my eyes. I'll catch the boy, then the father will come after him,_ he told himself as he started walking boldly across the clearing toward the teenager.

Suddenly, Fox stopped short. Right in front of him was the apparition, staring holes in him, grim-faced and stern, the light coming from its hand not the soft blue glow of the alien's sphere in all their previous encounters, but a solid brightness giving off shafts of brilliant blue-white light. The sphere looked like a star from the sky held in the rainbow-covered hand of the Forrester-creature before him. Fox's mouth fell open and he staggered back, terrified of the appalling expression of reproach he saw in those eyes.

_Leave him alone._

"What? Who said..." Fox stared around him, looking for the source of the sound that seemed to be coming thickly from the air all around him.

_Leave my son alone._

Fox found his eyes irresistibly drawn to the ice-blue gaze before him, blue like the sky, blue like the sea, but deeper, far deeper. He felt he would fall into those eyes and be consumed. Those eyes seemed all-powerful, all-knowing, able to see inside him, through him, to read his every thought. His mind leaped to a shattering conclusion: the alien had changed as Fox had always feared it would, and was going to take over the world in this new form.

In a frenzy, Fox started shooting his tranquilizer gun at the Forrester-being. The darts passed right through the being's body! "No! Oh, no!" the agent groaned as he backed away, his hands raised defensively before him.

 _Leave my son alone,_ the voice intoned again.

Was the voice coming from the air or was it in his head, Fox wondered as he stumbled back a few more steps. He gasped as the being blinked out of sight again. He stopped and rubbed his eyes, staring at the spot where the thing that looked like Forrester had been, then looked past that point to see the boy studying him. The FSA agent gathered his wits and pointed the gun at the teenager.

"Don't move, Scott. I have men all around here. You won't be hurt..."

"Right!" the boy exploded sarcastically. "I won't be hurt. I'll just be cut up and put in petri dishes. No thanks, Fox."

"Where's your father?"

"You just saw him, or what's left of him," the boy snapped.

"What?"

"The lightning got him."

"But what was..."

"He's changed now. He's a being of pure energy, remember? Or did you ever learn enough about him to find that out? Now my dad's the invisible man, thanks to you always chasing us and us being caught in this storm."

Fox was stunned. "Invisible? But...I saw him...didn't I?''

"Yeah, you saw him. So did I. But it took an incredible amount of energy for him to materialize. He won't do that very often." Scott's voice cracked in a crazed-sounding cackle as he continued. "You'll have all kinds of fun trying to catch him now. He's not dead, Fox. He's invisible. You can't see him or feel him, can you?"

"N-n-no..."

The boy seemed to be enjoying watching Fox fall apart. "Too bad for you. I can tell where he is even if I can't see him. He's there next to you, right now."

Fox leaped aside. "What? Where?''

Scott laughed, a sardonic, evil sound, particularly chilling coming from a smooth-faced child. "You'll never get away from us, now, Fox. Dad can stick to you like glue, and you'll never know where to look for him. Now we can show you what it's like to always have to look over your shoulder, to never know where the danger's coming from. You'll learn how it feels to always be afraid, to be hungry and cold, to be running, always running. You'll never be able to settle down, never be able to relax." The boy was advancing on the agent steadily. Fox cringed away from him.

"No...no...you..." Fox stammered.

"How's it feel, huh? Enjoying yourself yet?" The boy's eyes narrowed and his face twisted in hatred as he extended his sphere toward the agent. "Want to hold my sphere? Then Dad can really concentrate on you."

Fox turned to run from the boy, only to find himself face to face with the apparition again. It was larger than life now, at least ten feet tall, staring down at Fox in grim judgment, the rainbow hues covering and surrounding it flaring and whirling ever faster in an enlarging aura around the Paul Forrester-looking shape of the alien. Fox spun away from the apparition, but found himself face to face with the dangerous determination of the boy. The agent screamed and closed his eyes in terror, seeing the flash of the lightning splitting the heavens through his closed lids, hearing the crack of thunder, the groaning shriek as a tree split and crashed to the ground. He expected the next flash and noise to be some horrible, agonizing vengeance wreaked on him by the alien and its offspring. He fell to his knees in the torrential rain, crying, screaming, begging...

George Fox sat up, drenched in his own sweat, wakened by the sound of his own cries combined with the roar of the thunderstorm as lightning struck a tree near his window, making it tumble noisily to earth. He stared around him with huge eyes, his body quivering in fright. He forced his breathing to slow down, calmed his racing heart.

"A dream...just a dream.... Whew!" he muttered in relief as he wiped his face with a shaky hand.

The End

Copyright © September 9, 1990, by Abraxan, All rights reserved.


End file.
